So, it’s Thursday afternoon and the police scanner is alive with chatter. I’m just getting to the office and all I want to do is pound out a couple routine stories so I can go out and play with the other hooligans.

I’m off to a fast start.

“In Lewiston today —”

Frankly, I’m lucky I got that far. When scanner chatter is nonstop and you’re that day’s police beat reporter, others are on you like flies on road kill.

“Did you hear that? Guy stuck in a tree somewhere along Sabattus Street.”

Well, that’s certainly interesting. We don’t get a lot of guys stuck in trees these days. I mean, when is the last time you saw a human skeleton dangling from a big old oak tree somewhere.

I nudge the scanner volume up, waiting for the address to come through, and get back to work.

“In Lewiston today, a naked man with a fistful of thumbtacks —”

“Say, Mark. Did you hear that? Got a crash somewhere with fluids leaking.”

Ah, fluids leaking. When that description comes across the airwaves, you have to wonder: are those fluids leaking from a smashed automobile or from a person?

From an automobile, I decide. I’ll keep an ear on it.

I get writing again.

“In Lewiston today, a naked man with a fistful of thumbtacks climbed to the top of a —”

A second later, hero photographer Russ Dillingham is all up in my business.

“Did you hear that? Unattended death somewhere.”

The unattended death, always tricky. Could be just the sad demise of an older person who succumbed in the night. Could be a dashing drug dealer with bullet holes in his back and body parts missing.

Russ is looking at me in that seductive way he has. He’s got other things to do and wants me to go check on the poor dead soul. I look longingly at my barely-begun news story and head out.

Yup. Someone is dead, all right. Police and fire guys are streaming in and out of an Auburn apartment while I stake out the parking lot like a damn vulture.

“Hey there, sarge. Is this anything for me to be excited about?”

Nope. Turns out the death is routine, as far as death goes. Someone has passed and while that’s sad, there’s no reason for me to fill up a notebook with hen scratchings. I go back to the newsroom and start writing again.

“In Lewiston today, a naked man with a fistful of thumbtacks climbed to the top of a gazebo where he proceeded to —”

The phone rings. It’s Russ again, downtown and excited.

“Police foot chase along Pine Street. Not sure what it’s about, but I got video. Check on that, will you?”

I make myself a note. I resume writing.

“In Lewiston today, a naked man with a fistful of thumbtacks climbed to the top of a gazebo where he proceeded to hop up and down on one foot while singing —”

Speaking of birds of prey, there’s an editor standing next to my desk. He has that expression that says his present needs are more important than my silly gazebo story.

“Heard something cryptic over the scanner. Cops went looking for a kid and found him DOA. That’s dead on arrival, right?”

I nod yes, but I’m thinking nope. Nine times out of 10, what the cop said over the airwaves was GOA, which means gone on arrival. Completely different animal, am I right?

I promise to check on it. The editor doesn’t know from what town the call came, but he thinks it was somewhere in Androscoggin County. Probably Androscoggin County. Hard to tell. Our scanner picks up police traffic all the way to the New Hampshire border and beyond. Some nights, I think it picks up lunar chatter.

I scribble a note-to-self and resume writing.

“In Lewiston today, a naked man with a fistful of thumbtacks climbed to the top of a gazebo where he proceeded to hop up and down on one foot while singing along with Katy Perry’s hit song ‘Firework.’ Meanwhile, a drunk woman with a nose hoop —”

Screams from across the newsroom. Not really screams, I guess, but that’s how they sound to me. Five people are hollering at once and to me every one of them sounds like Jamie Lee Curtis with a leg caught in a bear trap.

“Did you hear that? Someone threatening to jump into the river.”

People are always threatening to jump into the river. Nobody ever takes seriously my suggestion that we install giant trampolines beneath each main bridge. “Goodbye, cruel world!”

BOING! You’re back on dry land again. Take that, sucker.

But we don’t have trampolines yet so I wander down to the Longley Bridge to see if Lewiston’s version of Mark Spitz is going to do a triple Lindy into the sparkling river blow. (Spoiler: He doesn’t.)

By the time I get back to the newsroom, an afternoon thunderstorm will be battering Oxford County 50 miles away. Instead of writing about dead folks, guys stuck in trees, police foot chases or drunk gals with nose rings, I’ll spent the next few hours writing about the (CENSORED) weather like (CENSORED, CENSORED, CENSORED) Joe Cupo.

One of my teenage buddies went to the University of Maine at Orono to study journalism, which I thought was just cool as hell. After graduation, though, he went directly into a career in advertising before switching over to — the connection is so obvious — physical therapy.

“What the hell, Hymie?” I asked him. We called him Hymie. I forget why. “You got yourself a degree in journalism. Shouldn’t you be out working a news beat somewhere.”

Nope. Hymie wanted nothing to do with news reporting, as it turns out.

“You go ino the office every day with no idea what you’ll be working on,” he said. “I mean, it’s something different every day. Who the hell wants to do that?”

Me, apparently. Although occasionally frustrating, and although 85 percent of the time I just end up writing about the (CENSORED) weather, the dazzling unpredictability of breaking news is the main appeal of my job.

Hymie goes to work every day knowing that he’ll be examining the widow Jones’s old bones at 9 a.m. and working on Mr. Snodderbean’s torn labrum (I have no idea if that’s a real thing) right after lunch.

Me? I generally have no idea what I’ll be doing from one minute to the next. Could be a tragic spork murder, could be a long school committee meeting, which to me is equally tragic.

Now about the guy with the thumbtacks and the girl with the hoop in her nose. It was the wildest thing. Just before police arrived, the drunk girl proceeded to scale the gazebo where she and the singing man got down to…

Wait. Did you hear that?

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